Cleaning crops vehicle and method of the same

Abstract

A vehicle is configured to operate next to a harvesting machine, and comprises a first receptacle suitable to receive crops delivered by the harvesting machine through a delivering conveyor while the vehicle is driving alongside the harvesting machine during a mobile harvesting operation and a cleaning device adapted to receive the received crops of the first receptacle and automatically separate the received crops in excess materials and cleaned crops. The vehicle is operated such that the excess materials of the cleaning device are scattered on the agricultural field while the vehicle is driving along the agricultural field and in that the vehicle further comprises a second receptacle adapted to buffer the cleaned crops.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention generally relates to a post-harvesting cleaning device and crops transfer.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Harvesting machines are used to harvest crops, such as potatoes, carrots and onions, from an agricultural field in an automated or semi-automated way. When these crops are harvested they mostly contain excess materials such as adhered particles like clod and / or haulm. Furthermore, a harvesting machine may also gather other excess material from the agricultural field while harvesting like for example stones. In order to meet quality requirements, the excess materials need to be removed from the crops.[0003]In order to do so the crops may first be stored in a receptacle from the harvesting machine and later on be cleaned, i.e. removing the excess materials, in a cleaning device suitable for cleaning crops.[0004]An example of such a cleaning device is disclosed in patent application US2015 / 0014226. A harvesting machine transfers hi...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The cleaning device is a vehicle that can be used on both public roads and agricultural fields. This allows operators to quickly move between different fields by simply driving to a new location. Additionally, the vehicle can operate with a harvesting machine, adjusting its pace to match theirs. When traveling in the opposite direction, the cleaning device can also continue to scatter debris without wasteting time at a stationary dumping location.

Problems solved by technology

There are some drawbacks related to embodiments of such cleaning devices known from the prior art.

Another drawback is that cleaning crops is also time consuming in the sense that it hampers the operation time of the harvesting machine.

As already mentioned above, such a stationary cleaning operation results in an accumulation of the removed waste.

This is especially problematic with respect to the removed soil, as in this way valuable soil and included nutrients are removed from the field where the crop was harvested and accumulated at the location where the cleaning operation is performed.

This however requires the use of containers and complicates the cleaning and harvesting operation as additional vehicles and containers are required, which must be operated in a coordinated fashion.

A further drawback of such root crop washers is that water is needed to clean the crops, thereby restricting the cleaning operation to locations where water is either available or needs to be transported to the location where the cleaning process is performed.

It is clear that such a harvester mounted cleaning device cannot be operated in a stationary position to perform a cleaning operation as then it would not be fed with an incoming stream of crop residue to be cleaned.

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